Vera Wang Goes Downtown

By Cheryl Tan

With retail sales this week posting the biggest monthly decline in 39 years and consumer confidence continuing to be low, this could well be the worst time in recent history to open a designer boutique.

Vera Wang’s new SoHo store. (Credit: Paul Warchol)

Vera Wang wasn’t dwelling on that at the opening party Thursday night of her new ready-to-wear boutique in New York City, however. “We figured we’d do our part for the economy!” Ms. Wang’s husband, Arthur Becker, quipped as he made his rounds, greeting fashion A-listers such as designer Patrick Robinson and Harper’s Bazaar’s Glenda Bailey, who braved a cold drizzle to visit the airy SoHo space. (Anna Wintour stayed for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, perhaps to avoid getting asked – for the Nth time this week — whether she was leaving Vogue.)

“Of course we’re all nervous,” acknowledged Ms. Wang, whose new 2,500-square foot store is the first that she’s opened since 1989. “But this has been in the plans for so long and you can’t really dictate what happens in the world. You can only go on what you believe in as a business strategy.”

And Ms. Wang’s strategy is to create a space that houses the multiple lines that she designs in order to draw the customer who mixes high- and low-end pieces in their ensembles. In the SoHo store, $260 shorts from her less-expensive Lavender label are hung up near a $9,800 fur bolero in her designer line, for example. “It’s a pretty realistic mix,” said Ms. Wang, who says the SoHo store can help her reach out to the customer who, like her, favors feminine pieces but also likes to mix in edgier, perhaps even goth-influenced looks. Indeed, Ms. Wang herself was a posterchild for this sensibility Thursday night; she had paired a Vera Wang top and jacket with leggings from her cheap-chic line for Kohl’s Corp. and topped it all off with a Fendi fur scarf.

Ms. Wang, who is opening two more boutiques in Los Angeles early next year, says she worked with architect Michael Gabellini, who has designed stores for labels like Jil Sander, on creating a space in SoHo that was basically an uncluttered white box that would serve as an art gallery-like venue to display her lines. Clothing and handbags are displayed on white fixtures with crisp, clean lines and floor-to-ceiling glass windows enable passers-by to peek at mannequins in dancer’s poses, suspended in mid-air while wearing Ms. Wang’s floaty frocks.

There is one significant area in which Ms. Wang may cut back due to the recession, however –the designer says she is currently weighing how she should present her Fall 2008 collection in February. Earlier this week, Italian labels Marni and Valentino announced they would forgo pricey fashion shows in January in favor of less-expensive showroom presentations. In New York, designers have been publicly debating whether or not to stage runway shows, which generally cost at least $100,000, at February’s fashion week.

“I don’t know what im doing yet,” Ms. Wang said. “To do big shows, you really need shock and awe. You need big accessories, you need power and drama in staging and in the clothing. I want to see what I think feels politically correct and feels appropriate from a business point of view at this stage.”

“I don’t think people know what it really costs to do collection clothing, much less a collection show,” she added. “You have to see whether that’s an anachronism or is that intelligent?”